Isn’t that a gorgeous picture? Teresa Boardman of the St. Paul Real Estate blog took it (used by permission). As I mentioned the other day, Teresa is a supporter of the notion of preserving the smokestack at Xcel’s High Bridge plant in St. Paul, the one they’re going to blow up on Saturday morning.

“It’s just a smokestack,” someone said in the comments section to the above post. True, enough. To appreciate the High Bridge smokestack, you have to think of it as representing something other than what it was — the dumping ground for pollution from a coal-burning power plant.

Smokestacks, though, represent industrialization, which used to be considered a good thing.

Cleveland, when it built Jacob’s Field (I refuse to call it Progressive Field), understood that by designing the light towers to portray smokestacks.

The smokestacks in Cleveland fouled the air in a city where they still joke about the time the river caught on fire, and yet they symbolized something greater.

That, I presume, is what Teresa sees in the smokestack, which is in its final hours as one of the dominating features of the St. Paul skyline.

Which brings us to…. the St. Paul skyline.

A skyline should make a statement about the city to all those who are about to enter it. Absent a symbol of the city’s past (along with a demolished brewery from some years ago), what statement will the St. Paul skyline make now?

On the way in from the eastern front today, I noticed the Capitol is now partly obscured from sections of I-94, by the addition to Regions Hospital. We have a bank building with the big red “1” still dominating the skyline. St. Paul: A good place to get sick and cash a check.

There is the Cathedral of St. Paul, of course. It’s a gorgeous building, to be sure. But it somehow stands apart from the downtown skyline, as if it’s in this city, but not of this city.

Tomorrow, by the way, News Cut will be accepting your pictures of the demolition of the smokestack. We’ll be providing video from this end. Use this form to send me your favorite shot. And if you want to provide some prose about the stack, I’ll be happy to include that, too.

Update Reader Sean Garrick has sent a photo he took Wednesday evening.

About the blogger

Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio since 1992, emigrating to Minnesota from Massachusetts. He was senior editor of news in the ’90s, ran MPR’s political unit, created the MPR News regional website, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day laments that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.

NewsCut is a blog featuring observations about the news. It provides a forum for an online discussion and debate about events that might not typically make the front page. NewsCut posts are not news stories.

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from where I perch on my stoop from the south east, Mounds Park, I can no longer see the Cathedral of St Paul, the ugly Galtier Plaza is in the way. But since its erection, there are other buildings behind it that would block the park view of the Cathedral anyway. On the right, you have an empty multi-purpose use building and a couple bill boards and on the left a bank. I do use the First Bank’s red number one as an indicator of how bad a storm is: if you can see the red one the storm is minimal, if you can’t see the one you should consider moving off of the porch from watching the storm and inot the house.

the best view of downtown, (in my opinion) is from Cherokee Park on the West Side off of Smith Avenue.

brian

This reminds me of an effort in my home town to save a smokestack. As far as I know it is still there.

bsimon

bsimon is soliciting recommendations for Smokestack implosion viewing locations. I’m wondering if there’s an appropriate overlook from the bike path coming down the bluff on the Mendota Heights side, along 13. Or is that around the bend from the stack?

As a point of clarification, I don’t mind seeing smokestack preservation as part of a whole complex – say the landmark brewery site. But to maintain an obsolete smokestack within an existing power generation facility seems to not make sense.

Andy

I’m planning on setting up shop across the river (the Mendota Heights side) for my tower demolition viewing pleasure. I’ll probably show up a little early to find the best vantage point.

Ugh, I hate getting up early on Saturdays! I think this will be a good show though.

I cross the Mendota Bridge every workday and I’ve really only paid attention to the smoke stack since I’ve heard of its eminent demise. I personally think the St Paul skyline will benefit from this (looking from the west that is).

It will take a long time to get used to looking out my home office window and not seeing the stack any more.

Alison

I’m all in favor of preservation of scenic and historical architechtural features, but this was really pretty plain and if I’m not mistaken, built in the ’70s. It’s purpose was carrying sooty pollution high enough into the atmosphere to rain down on someone else. Sad to see it go? Not really. There are plenty of interesting buildings to preserve without focusing on this.